For the record: New property development, and I'm excited about it!

Mark this date, folks:  On 11 October 2014, I, a confessed property development Luddite and curmudgeon who is generally in favour of fewer people and fewer buildings, actually felt a frisson of enthusiasm about the plans for new construction right here in my own neighbourhood.

The story hit the global press today, and it came as  a shock to me.  First, because Phnom Penh so rarely makes international news, but second, I had no idea this project was in the works. The biggest shock of all is the calibre of the architect -- Zaha Hadid!

[The information and photos below appeared in today's Guardian article. All images are by Ms. Hadid herself.]

This is the plan for the Sleuk Rith Institute --a museum, research centre, graduate school, document archives and research library devoted to the Khmer Rouge genocide.

The complex is planned to serve as a centre for genocide studies across Asia, with a strong educational and outreach component, and shares its site with a local high school – formerly home to a Khmer Rouge re-education camp. The land has been donated by the Cambodian government and a $35m fundraising campaign launched, with some funding already committed by USAID...

The high school mentioned above is the Boeung Trabek High School, and it's only a couple of blocks from my house.

This Institute is the goal of Youk Chhang, 53, who is the director of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia and who himself survived the hellish four-year reign of Pol Pot, in which two million Khmers perished.

“It’s like a silent heart attack,” says Chhang. “You think you’re all right, but then it comes back. I want the institute to break the silence, but it must be optimistic and look to the future. So many of these memorial museums are depressing, and you leave with a sense of anger, not forgiveness. They are usually designed by men, so I thought maybe a woman could do it better.”

Zaha Hadid has brought her trademark language of sinuous lines, but she has consciously eschewed some of her more violent geometries, making a building that promises to be unusually attuned to its context. The five functions have been separated into a cluster of individual buildings, echoing the five towers of Angkor Wat, while their structures are formed from great timber columns that split and entwine, like the writhing roots that enlace the ancient stone temples.

If this project does come to fruition, it will be, in my humble opinion, the most remarkable building and grounds in all of Cambodia, excepting of course the Angkorean ruins themselves.

This photo is Hadid's vision for the interior of the Institute's library.

Over the last two decades, Chhang and his team have compiled an archive of over a million documents, photographs, tapes and films, as well as mapped 200 prisons and 20,000 mass graves across the country. From confidential reports describing conditions in the countryside, where a million died of starvation, to confessions under torture of thousands of prisoners killed by the secret police, the archive provided essential evidence during the trial of two former Khmer Rouge leaders, Khieu Samphan, 83, and Nuon Chea, 88, who were finally convicted of crimes against humanity in August this year.

Although the five buildings are separate at the ground level, they're joined by raised walkways at the upper levels. This reflecting pool in the centre of the school building reminds me of the waterways in and around Angkor Wat.

I have no idea how much of the needed $35 million has been raised so far, but I pray, in these days when money for glitzy hotels, shopping malls and car dealerships seems to grow on trees, that the funding for this important and beautiful project will come together.